For some reason people see it as reasonable to expect to be able to conceal all the details of their online activities to a much greater extent than is possible in real life. Why ?
This is a good question because there are lots of potential answers, and the truth is probably a different mixture for different individuals.
First, the web is still "real life", but I guess you just chose that phrase as a representation of the traditional shop, cinema etc. What's different about putting computers in the transaction mechanism is that the data can be processed way beyond the limits of what could be cheaply done with paper/filing cabinet systems.
Taking this to it's next level, globalisation may mean we have "global person identifiers" (GPIs) instead of credit cards and national passports. There are several countries that already require identity cards, or some form of citizen numbering. In italy all citizens have a Fiscal Code (Codice Fiscale), which must be quoted in every transaction above a certain value -- this is supposed to allow the government to track money laundering etc. All it takes is for all these existing and growing registration systems to merge, and you'll never feel alone again.
The end debate is whether this is good or bad -- ie. ethics and politics. The two classic arguments (AFAICT), are 1) the government needs power to crack crime (Fiscal Code, NSAKEY etc), and 2) that the individual has a right to privacy. Ie. 1) Society is good and it's society that educates the individual to be a good citizen, or 2) The individual is good, and has to be protected from corrupt society --- ie. 1) society oppresses the individual or 2) the individual corrupts society
Needless to say, this is a basic duality that is so fundamental that there will typically always be two political parties, the so called Left and Right. But like all dualities, neither position is the truth... it is an integration of the two, in varying amounts, that is needed to secure the health of both good societies and individuals, and filter out the ill health of bad societies and bad individuals. But don't ask me how:-P
So back to the "real world", I don't like people getting the wrong impression about me. So I am, for example, against so called "handwriting experts" who profess to be able to say all sorts of things about my character, attitude, personality, performance etc. from just looking at my handwriting. I am against employers who, because they are ill informed and haven't made a proper objective study of their recruitment process, make use of such so called 'experts' --- not just because they may not hire me, but because they may not choose the right person anyway.
I suspect it's really the mis-use of the massive amounts of information that are becoming available that people are objecting to. Oh flaming heck, I've written too much... $(
That's an interesting point. But I would take issue with your use of the phrase "lack of discipline". It's not clear whether by "discipline" you mean "being totally focussed on a project" or whetehr you mean "following all orders from superiors, and disregarding consequences of said orders".
I've never been in the army, so I'm just guessing -- in the army discipline is about following orders, without consciously feeling the basic "wrongness" of torching villagers.
I'm also not an artist, but let me guess again -- an artist paints whatever he/she feels compelled to experiment, express, test, discover, and does so with complete focus --- nothing else is important apart from the pursuit of great art.
There may be other uses of the word discipline -- but you can see that "being disciplined" may not always be a positive quality.
Yes, there's the culture/social aspect. Perhaps some managers think there's advantages in running an operation with the lowest possible employee skill level. This makes employees easily replaceable, which gives the manager more power.
Linux may be seen as not only a system that can be super-expertly administered (and hence be the breeding ground of guru/priest/powerful employees), but also it may be seen as a system that people know only because they _enjoy_ learning it. Ie. they do it for the love of it, rather than for the money only. And on some level, this conflicts with the "work is meant to be hard" ethic that some people/managers have. So they may think that "people who use Linux are tinkerers, and as such are people who are enjoying it, and hence should _not_ be paid -- that they will be tinkering instead of doing the hard work of running the business systems".
Perhaps this is what some people may think, without realising it (ie. its a belief), and given that its not something that can be rationally supported (ie. its a belief) then the man's comments can only allude to this belief, by giving some pseudo-logical "reasoning" as to why linux is bad coz. people will tinker "undocumented changes".
Firstbrook also takes issue with Linux's most famous feature--the fact that it is free. "Our analysis says that the cost of the operating system is only 3 percent of the total cost of ownership of the server," he says.
And which operating systems is his data based on? He doesn't say. It could be windows for all we know.
People can have sudden "spiritual" experiences, spontaneous feelings of union with nature etc. But while the experience is "real", the person is left with the problem of how to interpret the experience. Like, wow, what was that?* Some people may think they've gone mad, or if they live in a culture where a particular religion predominates, and "spiritual" is equated with that particular religion, then they may join that.
I'm not saying any of this relates to Prince. I know nothing about him. I'm suggesting the possibility that some people may be religious because they were taught to be by their parents etc, and some may be "religious" because they had some spontaneous "illumination" and religion was the only game in town.
Historically it was somewhat risky to have mystical visions... you might be called a saint, or you might be burned at the stake, depending on how the people around you interpreted what you said.
* It doesn't take much. Just for a moment, stop identifying with the thoughts inside your head, and instead expand your identification to include the whole world around "you", or rather, "in you".
Opinions are like assholes. Everyone's got one and they all stink.
Yep. And nobody seems to be able to live without their asshole either.
If people didn't have opinions to "frame their reality" for them, it's like they'd dissapear into some "void of unknowing" or something. Imagine all those people at the donut counter... petrified, rooted to the spot... unable to choose their "favourite"... not knowing what to do... ahhhg --- the horror of it!!!
Perhaps the artists need protecting from $$$ flashing in their eyes. Before an artist becomes famous, perhaps they do it because they love their art. And would carry on making art regardless. But relatively rich bands may find it hard (read: impossible) to forefit their income. The more money they get, the more they want.
IMHO, Mozilla is what a BIG open source project should look like.
This comment reminds me of what some refer to as the "long term investment". Quite frankly we don't _really_ need a competitor to IE right now... like we don't need another Windows.
I suspect that what we want is a better internet. Not just bandwidth, but usefulness. And that may not come from MSIE "page holders" and "go buttons". It may only come from evolutionary developements (he said using poncy pretentious words).
Linux seems to have this quality -- its open to people changing it -- unlike windows that seems closed to people changing (ie. exclude people from using non-MS products). Perhaps Mozilla, in developing an architecture (poncy) that can include all these "cool features", is really proving itself available to many different possible future uses.
I suspect MS sees the browser as the platform, otherwise, why would they be so "innovative" about it?
The point is: children kill each other. What's different that disturbed kids have access to automatic weapons, but the underlying nature of the kids has not changed at all. There is no moral decay you're crying about.
So you are confident that it has always been "like this". I suggested that you gather some data, like asking people from previous generations, to see whether there has been an increase in the numbers of "troubled kids".
Because we are talking about whether it's getting "worse", so we need some numbers -- we need to count, to be able to say, today there are 4-5 incidents of child killing child per year, but 50 years ago there were... how many? We need data to see the trend. Then you can add that data to your opinion, and see for yourself if it matches.
But someone has replied to my earlier post, saying that previous generations just "hid away" any problems. That most shocking child incidents would simply not have been reported. So this puts the debate in an impossible position. We can gather no data, it seems. So now neither opinion ie. "it's getting worse" vs. "it's no different" is provable.
Today nations have access to apocalyptic weapons such as the ICBMs with multimegaton warhead loads instead of spears and swords. The person pushing The Button is not very much different from the tribal chief in 2000 b.c. ordering extermination of the neighbouring tribe.
There is one difference. The "tribal unit" is a far smaller organisation than "nation state". A nation contains many tribes, just like an organ of the body contains many tissues, each tissue containing many cells etc. A country is not just a "big huge tribe", because members of the "tribe" were more identical than any two people you find in a modern nation (mix of race, language, religion, politics, professions etc.)
So modern society has a higher degree of integration, and continues to integrate ever more complexity (previously gays were outcast, but are now starting to be integrated). The highest level "unit" of integration we have so far achieved is the country. Logically the next step is for countries to integrate into some form of world government -- as today we have global problems that no one country can solve alone. But notice that where one country can direct violence at another country ("war"), one child directing violence at another child is a failure of integration at a very low level.
These are children who have not even integrated into their own family or tribe... let alone feeling a part of their country. Such low level dis-integration is also seen in biology. The "wayward" cell that stops doing its function in a tissue of a organ, and starts doing it's own thing, is called a "mutation". If many thousands occur, then it begins to affect the whole body (ie. cancer).
So my hypothetical question to you is, how many "wayward" children (ie. incidents of brutal violence) per year would it take for you to begin to recognise the "cancer"? Consider that analogy. How many? Before you would worry?
The fact that kids are killing each other is nothing new under the sun.
Really? Have you asked you grandparents? What do they say happened? Did their generation have _children_ walking into schools commiting mass murders? Try asking them.
Which part of "society is falling apart" did you not understand? Look, please be specific. Yes. I agree that giving anyone, let alone the government, draconian powers is A Bad Idea. But my point is that the RIP bill is _not_ the issue. It's just a reaction to impending chaos. A chaos that is "under the surface" of what we see around us. We may have bigger houses and better stocked supermatkets, but we are also becoming more violent, dissociated and unconscious.
You don't feel it, because you can't see it. You don't see it, because you don't think it's there. What you "see" is the "state of the economy", the state of "technology" etc. but what you are asleep to is the disentegration of ordinary humaneness. Hence kids that are turning out as "little savages".
And unless people start working on mending these fractures, governments are going to react the only way they know how, ie. stupid laws.
Sorry people, but in case you haven't noticed, society has, at least since the industrial revolution, been falling apart.
Just look at the schools. In the previous generation, "problem children" meant kids that talked too much in class, while nowadays, the problem kids are out brutally murdering other kids, with guns or knives.
Just yesterday I read in the paper about three 13/14 year olds who ambushed another 14 year old, and did a 'Reservoir Dogs' on him. The paper said the Church community was "deeply shocked".
Like, is that it? People are just "shocked" and then carry on an usual? Shouldn't there be some all mighty alarm bells ringing? Politicians may jack off on talking about how they're going to spend more on police or education -- but doing more of the same is not going to help. The teachers are producing violent kids. The parents are producing violent kids. The neighbourhood is producing violent psychopaths, and almost nobody is asking why?
Neverhteless, governments are worried, so they are becoming more draconian. Just expect this trend to continue, as the levels of violence increase, and the psychopaths get organised, the govenment will need more power. Little good it's going to do us, mind you.
Hey, with 6Bn people on the planet, we can certainly afford a little mass-extinction.
I suggest we keep a portion of humanity, say 250 million, in pure "version zero.zero" reserve. Basically use everyone else as mass genetic experiment, but keep the zero.zeros breeding pure original offspring.
That way, if the mutants die off, we still have some original material to roll back to.
Recently here in UK we heard that some american news agency ran a story about "UK being more dangerous than USA" because the levels of muggings etc. were higher. But really, where are you more likely to get shot? Although I do feel really uncomfortable about the UK seeming to be a society of alcoholics, it's not as uncomfortable as the time when I was at school in south africa, and a kid pulled a gun on me... then he smiled. Yeah, real funny. Thanks.
BTW, what/where did you get this from? Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction. The self does not exist
I keep seeing people do odd things with their 'office suite' programs.* I wonder whether there are more business centered ways of doing this stuff.
Take wordprocessing. WP springs from the need to type letters accurately.** But letters also
get dictated
they get revised
they get sent to other companies
they get filed
they contain data, say quotes or something, that may depend on other data
and perhaps the letter itself becomes an important document for future referral
But despite all this context and workflow, the wordprocessor only direcly enables word entry and typographical formatting. Now add to this workflow the needs of B2B interaction, and you suddenly see that a company has a heck of a lot of data tied up inside a multitude of proprietary Word files.
I think feature bloat is a symptom of the painful fact that most software doesn't do what is necessary for business. Consider a small business. Consider the data they use. Forget the office formats used to store the data. Is there really any need for 200MB software packages to manage this small data?
Come on guys, you're information experts. What is the key information that a business runs on? How does this information flow around, in and out of an organisation? What are the tools to manipulate the flow, and what are the structures best suited for arranging this data?
Will the business desktop simply become a departmental transaction processing server...??
*Like keep their list of address mailing labels in a spreadsheet, or keep lists of amendments to cad drawings in a separate wp document. ** I don't know it's real history. Perhaps someone can fill us in?
No; most people are verbally-oriented. The ability to visualize and juggle spatial concepts is less common than the ability to describe, narrate, and request things.
Er, no. I suggest you read up on Neuro-Linguistic-Programming (NLP). NLP researches and models how we 'construct' our experience of the world. See Neuro-Linguistic Programming: A Definition.
Heck, other fields are like this too. I'll mention Buildings, as an example.
There was an architect called Charles Jenks, who wrote books about a new philosophy for design, which became known as Postmodernism. The theory was quite involved and sophisticated. This was in the 70's.
But the thory did not get copied. The complexity of his aesthetics did not get copied. Only certain elements got copied. The average skilled architect copied the use of brick and bright colors. These were easy and cheap to design into a building.
Here in the UK we got lots of brick buildings with square windows and brightly painted steelwork. This is the accepted look, and it's what the average architect does to satisfy the client.
It's a cheap ripoff of a shallow interpretation of a fifteen year old philosophy! Just like with computers, beige boxes are the accepted look. Is it beige? Is it a box? Yes? Yes? Great, start production.
Almost nobody breaks the mold. Today it happens to be some designers at Apple. But I have an old PowerMac 8500, and is it beige? Is it a box? Yep!
Today there's the architect Frank Ghery. His buildings are huge sculptures that seem to fly apart, every surface a complex curve, clad in shimmering steel or polished stone. Glass walls that bend and defy gravity. Nobody else builds the way he does. The whole form is a crazy bewilderingly complex composition. He is also famous, so he will have influence.
I can predict that in ten years all buildings will be brick, with some bright colored steel, and have one curve in them.
It's really sad, but for all our individualism, we're a conservative bunch. Afraid to break the mold. Afraid to look out of place. Manufacturers stick to the mold because they fear it'll flop. And they'd be right! Most consumers won't touch something 'odd' looking. A little different, maybe yes. But do something ever so slightly out of the norm and your neighbours will laugh at you, or worse, think you're a retard.
It's not surprising that people stick to the mold. WHat is surprising is that occasionally something new is accepted. Maybe people just get bored. Like one day a designer makes a hi-fi component that's all black. Maybe he was off his head, or maybe he was inspired. Anyhow, it survives. Then everyone follows. Then people get bored, and the market it ready for a breath of air again.
I think the term you were looking for was "uninformed".
Apart from that though, I have to agree with you. I don't think people should be put in jail for picking up stray banknotes off the bank entrace hall floor. It's the bank managers that need grabbing. Being open to attack from VBS is like the bank leaving it's money in the street.
If this sort of think keeps happening, we may have to see legislation of 'professional negligence' like you see with doctors, engineers etc.
all these... office types... that... need a bloated graphical office suite... need to... learn VI. Then they will be productive!
Yes, all those business types, spending their time trying to get their three data points into excel, then into a chart, then the chart into a powerpoint slide show*, when what they really need is a piece of chalk, a blackboard, and training in voice projection! It seems** that the only tangible result of the office app madness has been office colleagues swamping each other with reports.
Too many reports about nothing that nobody has time to read. Instead of writing a concise three paragraph statement, people spend twice the time fiddling with presentation.
Your post has been moderated 'Funny', but it's a real issue. I guess ms poured those $2Bn research dollars*** into writing reports in their own office app. about their research....
* Does office even do this..? I've never used office...:-) ** See Landauer, Thomas K. "The Trouble With Computers" *** A statistic 'quoted' somewhere in a/. post...
From the article: If these trends continue, Linux will become the center of the computing world, as we move into a more multi-platform industry where console devices are rising in popularity and the Windows dominated PC market faces increased competition from Apple's OS X. Windows on the other hand is hindered in this area and only a few small efforts have been made to add Unix, Mac, or Linux compatibility to Windows.
For those who's only computer is a games console, windows is not important. People will get basic web access through a TV box, or some hybrid game/music/media device, and the wintel illusion that the PC is somehow 'central' to the home network is just not going to happen in the mainstream.
This is because when people shop, they buy a game 'box' and games to play on it. They don't buy [box, os, game], just [box, game] -- there is no space in the mind of the home non-techy consumer for the concept of an OS. This is logical, because the OS is the software environment, and the box is the hardware environment -- both necessary and 'indivisible'.
This is why people say their computer is 'windows' or their software package is 'microsoft'. For the average consumer, the OS is as obscure and embedded as an engine is in a car. Or an electric motor in a toy car. I think this what this part of the article is alluding to... that to live long and prosper, the OS of choice must be happy in an embedded, open and friendly to interoperability context. Exit windows, enter Linux.
Slashdot Mirror
For some reason people see it as reasonable to expect to be able to conceal all the details of their online activities to a much greater extent than is possible in real life. Why ?
This is a good question because there are lots of potential answers, and the truth is probably a different mixture for different individuals.
First, the web is still "real life", but I guess you just chose that phrase as a representation of the traditional shop, cinema etc. What's different about putting computers in the transaction mechanism is that the data can be processed way beyond the limits of what could be cheaply done with paper/filing cabinet systems.
Taking this to it's next level, globalisation may mean we have "global person identifiers" (GPIs) instead of credit cards and national passports. There are several countries that already require identity cards, or some form of citizen numbering. In italy all citizens have a Fiscal Code (Codice Fiscale), which must be quoted in every transaction above a certain value -- this is supposed to allow the government to track money laundering etc. All it takes is for all these existing and growing registration systems to merge, and you'll never feel alone again.
The end debate is whether this is good or bad -- ie. ethics and politics. The two classic arguments (AFAICT), are 1) the government needs power to crack crime (Fiscal Code, NSAKEY etc), and 2) that the individual has a right to privacy. Ie. 1) Society is good and it's society that educates the individual to be a good citizen, or 2) The individual is good, and has to be protected from corrupt society --- ie. 1) society oppresses the individual or 2) the individual corrupts society
Needless to say, this is a basic duality that is so fundamental that there will typically always be two political parties, the so called Left and Right. But like all dualities, neither position is the truth... it is an integration of the two, in varying amounts, that is needed to secure the health of both good societies and individuals, and filter out the ill health of bad societies and bad individuals. :-P
But don't ask me how
So back to the "real world", I don't like people getting the wrong impression about me. So I am, for example, against so called "handwriting experts" who profess to be able to say all sorts of things about my character, attitude, personality, performance etc. from just looking at my handwriting. I am against employers who, because they are ill informed and haven't made a proper objective study of their recruitment process, make use of such so called 'experts' --- not just because they may not hire me, but because they may not choose the right person anyway.
I suspect it's really the mis-use of the massive amounts of information that are becoming available that people are objecting to.
Oh flaming heck, I've written too much... $(
"Jambo Bwana."-- don't ask me about Swahili -- I only ever got 10% in my Swahili test in school. :-(
Excellent.
I've never been in the army, so I'm just guessing -- in the army discipline is about following orders, without consciously feeling the basic "wrongness" of torching villagers.
I'm also not an artist, but let me guess again -- an artist paints whatever he/she feels compelled to experiment, express, test, discover, and does so with complete focus --- nothing else is important apart from the pursuit of great art.There may be other uses of the word discipline -- but you can see that "being disciplined" may not always be a positive quality.
Yes, there's the culture/social aspect. Perhaps some managers think there's advantages in running an operation with the lowest possible employee skill level. This makes employees easily replaceable, which gives the manager more power.
Linux may be seen as not only a system that can be super-expertly administered (and hence be the breeding ground of guru/priest/powerful employees), but also it may be seen as a system that people know only because they _enjoy_ learning it. Ie. they do it for the love of it, rather than for the money only. And on some level, this conflicts with the "work is meant to be hard" ethic that some people/managers have. So they may think that "people who use Linux are tinkerers, and as such are people who are enjoying it, and hence should _not_ be paid -- that they will be tinkering instead of doing the hard work of running the business systems".
Perhaps this is what some people may think, without realising it (ie. its a belief), and given that its not something that can be rationally supported (ie. its a belief) then the man's comments can only allude to this belief, by giving some pseudo-logical "reasoning" as to why linux is bad coz. people will tinker "undocumented changes".
Firstbrook also takes issue with Linux's most famous feature--the fact that it is free. "Our analysis says that the cost of the operating system is only 3 percent of the total cost of ownership of the server," he says.
And which operating systems is his data based on? He doesn't say. It could be windows for all we know.
People can have sudden "spiritual" experiences, spontaneous feelings of union with nature etc. But while the experience is "real", the person is left with the problem of how to interpret the experience. Like, wow, what was that?* Some people may think they've gone mad, or if they live in a culture where a particular religion predominates, and "spiritual" is equated with that particular religion, then they may join that.
I'm not saying any of this relates to Prince. I know nothing about him. I'm suggesting the possibility that some people may be religious because they were taught to be by their parents etc, and some may be "religious" because they had some spontaneous "illumination" and religion was the only game in town.
Historically it was somewhat risky to have mystical visions... you might be called a saint, or you might be burned at the stake, depending on how the people around you interpreted what you said.
* It doesn't take much. Just for a moment, stop identifying with the thoughts inside your head, and instead expand your identification to include the whole world around "you", or rather, "in you".
Some "people" have given nasty (shame on them!) replies to this, but to me it's the funniest thing I've seen on /. in the last year!
Still, my wife says I have no sense of humour...
Opinions are like assholes. Everyone's got one and they all stink.
Yep. And nobody seems to be able to live without their asshole either.
If people didn't have opinions to "frame their reality" for them, it's like they'd dissapear into some "void of unknowing" or something. Imagine all those people at the donut counter... petrified, rooted to the spot... unable to choose their "favourite" ... not knowing what to do ... ahhhg --- the horror of it!!!
Perhaps the artists need protecting from $$$ flashing in their eyes. Before an artist becomes famous, perhaps they do it because they love their art. And would carry on making art regardless. But relatively rich bands may find it hard (read: impossible) to forefit their income. The more money they get, the more they want.
... just an opinion.
IMHO, Mozilla is what a BIG open source project should look like.
This comment reminds me of what some refer to as the "long term investment". Quite frankly we don't _really_ need a competitor to IE right now... like we don't need another Windows.
I suspect that what we want is a better internet. Not just bandwidth, but usefulness. And that may not come from MSIE "page holders" and "go buttons". It may only come from evolutionary developements (he said using poncy pretentious words).
Linux seems to have this quality -- its open to people changing it -- unlike windows that seems closed to people changing (ie. exclude people from using non-MS products). Perhaps Mozilla, in developing an architecture (poncy) that can include all these "cool features", is really proving itself available to many different possible future uses.
I suspect MS sees the browser as the platform, otherwise, why would they be so "innovative" about it?
The point is: children kill each other. What's different that disturbed kids have access to automatic weapons, but the underlying nature of the kids has not changed at all. There is no moral decay you're crying about.
So you are confident that it has always been "like this". I suggested that you gather some data, like asking people from previous generations, to see whether there has been an increase in the numbers of "troubled kids".
Because we are talking about whether it's getting "worse", so we need some numbers -- we need to count, to be able to say, today there are 4-5 incidents of child killing child per year, but 50 years ago there were... how many? We need data to see the trend. Then you can add that data to your opinion, and see for yourself if it matches.
But someone has replied to my earlier post, saying that previous generations just "hid away" any problems. That most shocking child incidents would simply not have been reported. So this puts the debate in an impossible position. We can gather no data, it seems. So now neither opinion ie. "it's getting worse" vs. "it's no different" is provable.
Today nations have access to apocalyptic weapons such as the ICBMs with multimegaton warhead loads instead of spears and swords. The person pushing The Button is not very much different from the tribal chief in 2000 b.c. ordering extermination of the neighbouring tribe.
There is one difference. The "tribal unit" is a far smaller organisation than "nation state". A nation contains many tribes, just like an organ of the body contains many tissues, each tissue containing many cells etc. A country is not just a "big huge tribe", because members of the "tribe" were more identical than any two people you find in a modern nation (mix of race, language, religion, politics, professions etc.)
So modern society has a higher degree of integration, and continues to integrate ever more complexity (previously gays were outcast, but are now starting to be integrated). The highest level "unit" of integration we have so far achieved is the country. Logically the next step is for countries to integrate into some form of world government -- as today we have global problems that no one country can solve alone. But notice that where one country can direct violence at another country ("war"), one child directing violence at another child is a failure of integration at a very low level.
These are children who have not even integrated into their own family or tribe... let alone feeling a part of their country. Such low level dis-integration is also seen in biology. The "wayward" cell that stops doing its function in a tissue of a organ, and starts doing it's own thing, is called a "mutation". If many thousands occur, then it begins to affect the whole body (ie. cancer).
So my hypothetical question to you is, how many "wayward" children (ie. incidents of brutal violence) per year would it take for you to begin to recognise the "cancer"? Consider that analogy. How many? Before you would worry?
The fact that kids are killing each other is nothing new under the sun.
Really? Have you asked you grandparents? What do they say happened? Did their generation have _children_ walking into schools commiting mass murders? Try asking them.
Because what you've written is nonsense.
Which part of "society is falling apart" did you not understand? Look, please be specific. Yes. I agree that giving anyone, let alone the government, draconian powers is A Bad Idea. But my point is that the RIP bill is _not_ the issue. It's just a reaction to impending chaos. A chaos that is "under the surface" of what we see around us. We may have bigger houses and better stocked supermatkets, but we are also becoming more violent, dissociated and unconscious.
You don't feel it, because you can't see it. You don't see it, because you don't think it's there. What you "see" is the "state of the economy", the state of "technology" etc. but what you are asleep to is the disentegration of ordinary humaneness. Hence kids that are turning out as "little savages".
And unless people start working on mending these fractures, governments are going to react the only way they know how, ie. stupid laws.
Sorry people, but in case you haven't noticed, society has, at least since the industrial revolution, been falling apart.
Just look at the schools. In the previous generation, "problem children" meant kids that talked too much in class, while nowadays, the problem kids are out brutally murdering other kids, with guns or knives.
Just yesterday I read in the paper about three 13/14 year olds who ambushed another 14 year old, and did a 'Reservoir Dogs' on him. The paper said the Church community was "deeply shocked".
Like, is that it? People are just "shocked" and then carry on an usual? Shouldn't there be some all mighty alarm bells ringing? Politicians may jack off on talking about how they're going to spend more on police or education -- but doing more of the same is not going to help. The teachers are producing violent kids. The parents are producing violent kids. The neighbourhood is producing violent psychopaths, and almost nobody is asking why?
Neverhteless, governments are worried, so they are becoming more draconian. Just expect this trend to continue, as the levels of violence increase, and the psychopaths get organised, the govenment will need more power. Little good it's going to do us, mind you.
Hey, with 6Bn people on the planet, we can certainly afford a little mass-extinction.
I suggest we keep a portion of humanity, say 250 million, in pure "version zero.zero" reserve. Basically use everyone else as mass genetic experiment, but keep the zero.zeros breeding pure original offspring.
That way, if the mutants die off, we still have some original material to roll back to.
As a top professional consultant I've worked with a lot of startups in the last few years, and the one thing that is of crucial importance...
This apparently adds "weight" to your point of view, but nevertheless remains "empty".
Please clarify, what are you consulting in? What was the nature of the start-ups?
Recently here in UK we heard that some american news agency ran a story about "UK being more dangerous than USA" because the levels of muggings etc. were higher. But really, where are you more likely to get shot? Although I do feel really uncomfortable about the UK seeming to be a society of alcoholics, it's not as uncomfortable as the time when I was at school in south africa, and a kid pulled a gun on me... then he smiled. Yeah, real funny. Thanks.
BTW, what/where did you get this from?
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction.
The self does not exist
I keep seeing people do odd things with their 'office suite' programs.*
I wonder whether there are more business centered ways of doing this stuff.
Take wordprocessing. WP springs from the need to type letters accurately.**
But letters also
But despite all this context and workflow, the wordprocessor only direcly enables word entry and typographical formatting. Now add to this workflow the needs of B2B interaction, and you suddenly see that a company has a heck of a lot of data tied up inside a multitude of proprietary Word files.
I think feature bloat is a symptom of the painful fact that most software doesn't do what is necessary for business. Consider a small business. Consider the data they use. Forget the office formats used to store the data. Is there really any need for 200MB software packages to manage this small data?
Come on guys, you're information experts. What is the key information that a business runs on? How does this information flow around, in and out of an organisation? What are the tools to manipulate the flow, and what are the structures best suited for arranging this data?
Will the business desktop simply become a departmental transaction processing server...??
*Like keep their list of address mailing labels in a spreadsheet, or keep lists of amendments to cad drawings in a separate wp document.
** I don't know it's real history. Perhaps someone can fill us in?
No; most people are verbally-oriented. The ability to visualize and juggle spatial concepts is less common than the ability to describe, narrate, and request things.
Er, no. I suggest you read up on Neuro-Linguistic-Programming (NLP). NLP researches and models how we 'construct' our experience of the world. See Neuro-Linguistic Programming: A Definition.
why don't other computer makers even try?
Heck, other fields are like this too. I'll mention Buildings, as an example.
There was an architect called Charles Jenks, who wrote books about a new philosophy for design, which became known as Postmodernism. The theory was quite involved and sophisticated. This was in the 70's.
But the thory did not get copied. The complexity of his aesthetics did not get copied. Only certain elements got copied. The average skilled architect copied the use of brick and bright colors. These were easy and cheap to design into a building.
Here in the UK we got lots of brick buildings with square windows and brightly painted steelwork. This is the accepted look, and it's what the average architect does to satisfy the client.
It's a cheap ripoff of a shallow interpretation of a fifteen year old philosophy! Just like with computers, beige boxes are the accepted look. Is it beige? Is it a box? Yes? Yes? Great, start production.
Almost nobody breaks the mold. Today it happens to be some designers at Apple. But I have an old PowerMac 8500, and is it beige? Is it a box? Yep!
Today there's the architect Frank Ghery. His buildings are huge sculptures that seem to fly apart, every surface a complex curve, clad in shimmering steel or polished stone. Glass walls that bend and defy gravity. Nobody else builds the way he does. The whole form is a crazy bewilderingly complex composition. He is also famous, so he will have influence.
I can predict that in ten years all buildings will be brick, with some bright colored steel, and have one curve in them.
It's really sad, but for all our individualism, we're a conservative bunch. Afraid to break the mold. Afraid to look out of place. Manufacturers stick to the mold because they fear it'll flop. And they'd be right! Most consumers won't touch something 'odd' looking. A little different, maybe yes. But do something ever so slightly out of the norm and your neighbours will laugh at you, or worse, think you're a retard.
It's not surprising that people stick to the mold. WHat is surprising is that occasionally something new is accepted. Maybe people just get bored. Like one day a designer makes a hi-fi component that's all black. Maybe he was off his head, or maybe he was inspired. Anyhow, it survives. Then everyone follows. Then people get bored, and the market it ready for a breath of air again.
And you're too stupid to realise!!!
I think the term you were looking for was "uninformed".
Apart from that though, I have to agree with you. I don't think people should be put in jail for picking up stray banknotes off the bank entrace hall floor. It's the bank managers that need grabbing. Being open to attack from VBS is like the bank leaving it's money in the street.
If this sort of think keeps happening, we may have to see legislation of 'professional negligence' like you see with doctors, engineers etc.
all these ... office types ... that ... need a bloated graphical office suite ... need to ... learn VI. Then they will be productive!
Yes, all those business types, spending their time trying to get their three data points into excel, then into a chart, then the chart into a powerpoint slide show*, when what they really need is a piece of chalk, a blackboard, and training in voice projection! It seems** that the only tangible result of the office app madness has been office colleagues swamping each other with reports.
Too many reports about nothing that nobody has time to read. Instead of writing a concise three paragraph statement, people spend twice the time fiddling with presentation.
Your post has been moderated 'Funny', but it's a real issue. I guess ms poured those $2Bn research dollars*** into writing reports in their own office app. about their research....
* Does office even do this..? I've never used office... :-) /. post...
** See Landauer, Thomas K. "The Trouble With Computers"
*** A statistic 'quoted' somewhere in a
Wouldn't that make Windows 2000 some sort of embryonic OS???
It would make Windows 2000 The Blob ... it only arrived on the planet yesterday, but it's already the size of Manhattan...
From the article:
If these trends continue, Linux will become the center of the computing world, as we move into a more multi-platform industry where console devices are rising in popularity and the Windows dominated PC market faces increased competition from Apple's OS X. Windows on the other hand is hindered in this area and only a few small efforts have been made to add Unix, Mac, or Linux compatibility to Windows.
For those who's only computer is a games console, windows is not important. People will get basic web access through a TV box, or some hybrid game/music/media device, and the wintel illusion that the PC is somehow 'central' to the home network is just not going to happen in the mainstream.
This is because when people shop, they buy a game 'box' and games to play on it. They don't buy [box, os, game], just [box, game] -- there is no space in the mind of the home non-techy consumer for the concept of an OS. This is logical, because the OS is the software environment, and the box is the hardware environment -- both necessary and 'indivisible'.
This is why people say their computer is 'windows' or their software package is 'microsoft'. For the average consumer, the OS is as obscure and embedded as an engine is in a car. Or an electric motor in a toy car. I think this what this part of the article is alluding to... that to live long and prosper, the OS of choice must be happy in an embedded, open and friendly to interoperability context. Exit windows, enter Linux.